With Andrew Luck on his way, Tom Brady is back at a familiar crossroads

Monday

Jan 6, 2014 at 12:01 AMJan 6, 2014 at 5:54 AM

When Tom Brady plays the top young quarterbacks there's that added sense of mystery — that added value of knowing it's something they'll talk about down the road.

JONATHAN COMEY

Tom Brady is not a young man anymore, not in football terms.

And so now, at age 36, with all his success, when he plays the top young quarterbacks there's that added sense of mystery — that added value of knowing it's something they'll talk about down the road.

This year, he met Cam Newton for the first time; last year it was Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick. Mobile, smart, tough young quarterbacks, trying to capture Brady's same sense of how to win football games.

And while it's an inconvenient truth, it still must be told:

Brady lost all three.

Well, Brady didn't lose anything — last time we checked, single human beings don't win NFL games — but he did fail to win. And, in all three cases, he was outplayed both statistically and by naked-eye consensus.

But as any get-rich-quick infomercial will tell you, prior success does not guarantee future return. And all the history just means this: that this game is historic, with a capital "H," just one more milestone NFL moment being ushered in here in tiny Foxboro.

Amazing how many great games and historic quarterback matchups we've seen here, and now we have another: Tom Brady vs. Andrew Luck.

Andrew Luck has it. He gets it. Usually, he wins it. Watching him lead the Colts back from 28 down to beat Kansas City was impressive; what's more impressive is that he does this stuff a lot.

Like Brady, any team with him as the centerpiece is going to win 70 percent of the time — regardless of the talent on his side or the other.

That's what defines a special quarterback; Luck and Brady qualify.

Is Luck young, and unproven at a certain level? No doubt, but the great ones don't take long to figure it out. Both Manning and Brady were on their way in Year 2, and Luck is right in that same wheelhouse.

Anything less than a spectacular career arc for Luck would flat-out shock me.

Bill Belichick summed Luck up with tidy ease Sunday, as he tends to do: "He's done all the things that I think he has the talent to do."

Now, Belichick isn't above puffing up an opposing player publicly (while searching in his devious dungeon for the flaws), but his scouting report on Luck Sunday was just pure fact:

"He obviously a smart guy. He works hard, he's tough, he has good leadership skills. He's athletic, he can make plays with his feet and his arm: scramble plays, designed plays, plays that play out kind of the way they're drawn up but he can improvise and make plays on his own. He does a good job of seeing down the field. He throws a very good deep ball, has good touch on some of the short and intermediate plays: screens, crossing routes, again some touch plays in the red zone."

In other words, he came into the league with all the skills, and has applied them at that mythic preparation level that Brady and Manning are known for.

Assuming normal health, and a continued emphasis on QB safety in the NFL, Luck's likelihood to be the new all-time compiler of quarterback awesomeness is more than fair.

But none of that bright, heady future is going to mean much on Saturday in Foxboro.

Luck, coach Chuck Pagano and the Colts are confident they can come here and win this week, then do it again the next, and the next. Brady, Belichick and the Patriots? They know they can do it.

This is what makes this game so good — as much as a visit from Andy Dalton and the Bengals might have been nice, when you want to win it all, sometimes you face a legendary road. And you've got to do your best to tarnish a lot of those legends along the way.

Luck's legend? It will be written someday. Will a chapter be added this weekend in Foxboro?

That's up for Brady and the Patriots to decide.

Jonathan Comey is sports and features editor for The Standard-Times. Email him: jcomey@s-t.com